Cause for Alarm v-2

by Eric Ambler

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “What on earth are you getting at, Claire?”

  “Go on walking, darling, and I’ll tell you.” We went on. “You remember that engineering paper you left in the hall the other night?”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “I had a look through it, Nicky. You’d marked an advertisement in the Appointments Vacant Section. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes, vaguely.”

  “Well…?”

  I spluttered. “Good heavens, Claire, you’re not suggesting…?”

  “Why not? It fits your qualifications exactly. It might have been designed specially for you.” And then, as I began to expostulate once more: “No, listen, Nicky. It would do you good.”

  I halted again. “Now you listen to me, sweet. There are some things which are fantastic and absurd, and this is one of them.”

  She laughed. “All right, but here”-she produced a piece of paper from her bag and thrust it into a pocket of my overcoat-“I tore it out in case you might want to change your mind. Good night, darling.”

  When at last I continued my walk to the station, I had completely forgotten about the piece of paper.

  A week went by. Those seven days were the most depressing I have ever spent. For the first six of them nothing at all happened. Then, on the morning of the seventh, I received a letter from a famous engineering firm in answer to an application of mine in reply to an advertisement for a works manager in one of their smaller factories. I was to call at their offices at three o’clock that day.

  At three o’clock I was there. With me in the reception room were two other men. Both were middle-aged. Both, I guessed, were there on the same business as I was. I was right.

  I was the last to be seen by the works director. He greeted me with an air of patient amiability.

  “Oh yes”-he glanced at my letter lying on the spotless blotting-pad in front of him-“Mr. Marlow, isn’t it? Yes, yes. Now, I asked you to call for a special reason. Quite frankly we consider you a little too young for consideration in connection with the post under discussion at the moment.” He primped his moustache wearily. I waited. “However,” he went on, “we could use a young, unmarried man with your qualifications in connection with an important contract we have just secured. Mind you, I’m not making you a definite offer. If you’re interested we’ll discuss it further. The-er-salary, naturally, is not very large. You probably know how bad things are at the moment, eh? And, of course, it would mean signing on for four years. Still, I don’t suppose that would worry a young man like you. It’s a great place, Bolivia, a great…”

  I interrupted the flow. “Where did you say?”

  He looked surprised. “Bolivia. The Chaco war,” he went on confidently, “showed them the need for relying upon their own resources in time of war. It is a question of establishing two factories and putting them on an economical production basis. The experience alone…”

  But I had risen. I could feel that I had become very red in the face. “Thank you very much,” I said curtly. “I am afraid, however, that my time is valuable this afternoon. I must apologise for wasting yours. I feel sure that you will find the man you want quite easily.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then shrugged. “Naturally. Good afternoon. Pull the door to behind you as you go, will you?”

  Outside, I bought an evening paper, crossed to a teashop and ordered a cup of tea. Then I noticed that, seated at the next table was one of the men I had seen in the reception room. On a sudden impulse, I leaned across to him.

  “Excuse me, sir. I hope you’ll forgive my asking; but, as a matter of interest, do you mind telling me if you have just been offered a post in South America?”

  He looked startled. He was a grey-haired man with a heavy, intelligent face and large, capable hands. He examined me suspiciously. Then he grinned.

  “So they tried that on you too, did they? Well, I don’t mind telling you. He did offer me a job in South America-at three quid a week. Said I was too old for the job advertised. Bolivia and three quid a week! Me! I told him what he could do with it. I don’t think he liked it much.”

  “I suppose, then, that the other man got the real job.”

  “Real job?” He laughed derisively. “There isn’t any real job, my friend. That’s just a way of getting good men cheap. I’ve seen that game before. They cut their price to compete with the United States and the Monroe Doctrine. Then they have to make their precious profit. I might have fallen for it, but luckily I’ve got a job of sorts, selling small tools.” He indicated an attache-case on the chair beside him. “Cheap Jap stuff.”

  I offered him a cigarette. We went on talking. Bit by bit I learned something of his career; and, as I listened to the quiet, almost casual account of the work he had done, I knew that here was a man beside whose qualifications and experience mine were second-rate. This man knew his job supremely well. Other things being equal, no management with any sense would have hesitated to choose him in preference to me. And yet, here he was selling small tools, “Cheap Jap stuff.” When I asked him how business was, he smiled.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said ruefully; “I’m not much good as a traveller. It’s a very difficult thing to be good at. I’ve no patience, very little tact, and I’m always getting people’s backs up by showing them how they ought to run their businesses. Besides, I can’t help telling them just how bad my stuff is. I’m trying to improve, but it’s tough going.” He called for his bill. “It’s time I was off. Glad to have met you.”

  When he had gone I tried to read my evening paper. Herr Hitler had reaffirmed the principle of the Rome-Berlin collaboration. Signor Mussolini had made another speech from the balcony of the Palazzo di Venezia. The chairman of an armaments combine had announced complacently that profits for the previous year had proved extremely satisfactory and had expressed confidence in the future of the company. Another Balkan state had gone Fascist. A Croat living in the Paris suburbs had dismembered his mistress’s body with a hatchet. A banker had welcomed improved prospects for foreign lending. There were two pictures on the front page: one of two grinning and embarrassed soldiers riding on a new type of tank, the other of a famous statesman, looking like an apprehensive vulture with a fishing-rod in one hand and a very small fish in the other. On page four was an article entitled: “In thy strength, O Britain…” by an ex-naval officer who, I happened to know, was also a director of a naval construction yard.

  I put the paper down, finished my tea and felt in my pocket for a match to light a cigarette. My fingers encountered the piece of paper. I drew it out, smoothed it on the table and read the advertisement through again very carefully.

  REQUIRED by Midland firm. Thoroughly experienced production engineer to take charge of Continental office. Must speak fluent Italian and have had experience of high-production practice. Language qualification essential. Generous salary and commission to right man. Excellent prospects. Apply, stating age, experience (in detail) and when available, to Box 536X.

  I don’t know what had possessed me to mark it. Maybe it was the bit about the Italian that had struck me as odd. After my parents had died I had shared a room with an Italian fellow-student who had taught me his language in exchange for mine. It had all been part of a plan to spend our summer vacation walking south from Naples. The plan had never matured. We had quarrelled a week before we had been due to start. But my Italian had remained, nourished by an occasional novel from Hachettes and, lately, vague ideas about a honeymoon in Rome.

  I put the paper back in my pocket. It was out of the question, of course. Absurd. Claire, bless her heart, was talking nonsense.

  But the fact that I put the paper back in my pocket instead of throwing it away was, I think, significant. Almost without my knowing it, the seed of the idea was swelling in my mind. That evening when I arrived at my flat, the seed bore fruit. There were two letters for me. Both had the word “regret” in the first line.

  I had a bath, ch
anged my clothes, sat down by the fire and lit a cigarette. For ten minutes I remained there, thinking. Then I got up. There was, after all, no harm in writing. It would probably come to nothing, anyway. Besides, even if I were offered the job, I could always change my mind.

  “By the way,” I remarked casually later that evening; “just as a matter of interest, I’ve written for that Italian job. I wouldn’t take it, naturally, but there’s no harm in seeing what it’s all about.”

  “I thought you’d be sensible, darling,” said Claire.

  2

  SPARTACUS

  Four days later I received a letter from The Spartacus Machine Tool Company Limited of Wolverhampton. It was signed by a Mr. Alfred Pelcher, the Managing Director, and requested me to call upon him at Wolverhampton the following day. “Should,” the letter concluded, “our meeting not produce any result to our mutual advantage, we shall be pleased to refund to you the travelling expenses from London.”

  That sounded fair enough. The following day I walked out of Wolverhampton station and asked to be directed to the Spartacus Works. After a bus ride and a ten-minute walk, I came to them, a dingy, sprawling collection of buildings at the end of a long and very muddy road. The view did nothing to raise my drooping spirits. Neither did my reception.

  As I approached, a decrepit looking gate-keeper appeared out of a wooden office and asked my business.

  “I want to see Mr. Pelcher.”

  He sucked his teeth and shook his head firmly. “No travellers seen except on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s a waste of time to try other days.”

  “I’m not a traveller. I have an appointment with Mr. Pelcher.”

  He bridled. “Why didn’t you say so? I’ve got my job to do. I can’t be expected to know everything. I’m not,” he added unnecessarily, “a ruddy crystal gazer. Here”-he grasped my arm-“over there and up the stairs.” He indicated a flight of steel stairs set against the side of a black brick building on the opposite side of the yard and retired, muttering, to his office.

  I thanked him, clanked up the stairs and pushed open a door marked “S ALES O FFICE AND E NQUIRIES. P lease walk in.” Beyond it was a small frosted glass window, labelled “K NOCK.” I knocked. The window slid open with a crash and a fat, pale youth with the beginnings of a moustache peered through at me.

  “I want to see Mr. Pelcher.”

  “Reps., Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said the youth severely. “There’s a notice at the gate. I don’t know what some of you chaps are coming to. It’s a waste of your time and mine. You can’t see him now.”

  “I have an appointment.”

  He shrugged. “Oh well! Name?”

  “Marlow.”

  “O.K.”

  The window slammed again and I heard him asking over a telephone for Mrs. Moshowitz. Then: “Is that Mrs. Mo? This is your little Ernest speaking from the Sales office.” There was a pause. “Now, now! Naughty, naughty,” he went on playfully. He lapsed suddenly into the lingua franca of the gangster film. “Say, listen, sister. There’s a sucker here named Marlow. He claims he has an appointment with the Big Boy. Shall I let him have it in the stomach or will the Big Boy give him the works himself?” Another pause. “All right, all right, keep your stays on.” He slammed down the telephone, reappeared at the door and announced that he would himself take me across to Mr. Alfred’s office.

  We descended the stairway, turned to the right along an alleyway littered with rusty scrap and climbed up another flight of stairs to a door with a Wet Paint notice hanging on the handle. My escort kicked the door open with his heel and informed the elderly and harassed-looking Jewess who glared at him indignantly across a sea of blue-prints that I was the man for Mr. Alfred.

  This I was beginning to doubt. What I had so far seen of the Spartacus Machine Tool Company had impressed me so little that I was within an ace of leaving then and there, without seeing its Managing Director or troubling about my travelling expenses. I was a fool, I told myself, to have wasted a day on such a wild goose chase. But it was too late to think about that now. I was being shown into Mr. Alfred’s room.

  It was large and very untidy. Stack upon stack of dusty files and tattered blue-prints formed a sort of dado round the green distempered wall, the upper part of which was decorated with many framed catalogue illustrations of machines and two yellowing gold-medal award certificates from Continental trade exhibitions. A coal fire smoked below a mantelpiece groaning under a pile of technical reference books, an Almanach de Gotha, a bronze Krishna mounted on a teak plinth and a partly concealed copy of Etiquette for Men. In one corner was a bag of golf-clubs. In the centre of the room, behind an enormous table strewn with labelled machine parts, correspondence trays, wooden golf tees, engineering trade papers and boxes of various sorts of paper clips, sat Mr. Alfred Pelcher himself.

  He was a small, bald, cheerful man of about fifty with rimless, bi-focal spectacles and a soft, soothing manner which suggested that he had judged you to be in a very bad temper and was determined to coax you out of it. His dress-clearly the product of a compromise between the demands of a morning in the office and an afternoon’s golf-consisted of a black lounge suit jacket, a brown cardigan and a pair of grey flannel trousers. He had a habit of wrenching desperately at his collar as if it were choking him.

  When I entered the room he was fiddling busily with the curser of a two-foot slide-rule and transferring the results of his calculations to the margin of a copy of The Times Trade and Engineering Supplement. Without looking at me he waved the slide-rule in the air to indicate that he was nearly finished. A moment or two later he dropped the slide-rule, sprang to his feet and shook me warmly by the hand.

  “How very good of you to come all this way to see us.” He pressed me into a chair. “Do sit down. Now let me see, it’s Mr. Marlow, isn’t it? Splendid.” He waved a deprecatory hand at his marginal calculations. “Just a little problem in mechanics, Mr. Marlow. I’ve been trying to work out approximately how many foot-pounds of energy an eighteen handicap man saves on an average round by having a caddy to carry his clubs for him. It’s a tremendous figure.” He chuckled. “Do you play golf, Mr. Marlow?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “A great game. The greatest of all games.” He beamed at me. “Well, well now. To business, eh? We wrote to you, didn’t we? Yes, of course.” He relapsed into his chair again and stared at me through the lower half of his spectacles for fully thirty seconds. Then he leaned forward across the table. “ Se non e in grado,” he said deliberately, “ di accettare questa mia proposta, me lo dica francamente. Non me l’avro a male.”

  I was a little taken aback, but I replied suitably: “ Prima prendere una decisione vorrei sapere sua proposta, Signore.”

  His eyebrows went up. He snapped his fingers delightedly. He lifted the slide-rule, banged it down on the table and sat back again.

  “Mr. Marlow,” he said solemnly, “you are the first person to answer our advertisement who has read it carefully. I have seen six gentlemen before you. Three of them could speak tourist French and insisted that most Italians would understand it. One had been in Ceylon and had a smattering of Tamil. He declared, by the way, that if you shouted loud enough in English anyone would know what you were driving at. Of the other two, one spoke fluent German, while the last had been on a cruise and spent a day in Naples. You are the first to see us who can speak Italian.” He paused. Then a sudden expression of alarm clouded his features. He looked like a child who is about to be hurt. “You are an engineer, aren’t you, Mr. Marlow?” He plucked anxiously at his collar. “You are not, by any chance, an electrician or a chemist or a wireless expert?”

  I summarised my qualifications briefly and was about to refer him for greater detail to the letter I had written when I saw that my letter was on the table in front of him and that he was nodding happily over it while I talked. Mr. Pelcher was evidently not quite so ingenious as he appeared.

  When I had finished, he slid the letter discreetl
y under his blotter and emitted a loud sigh of relief. “Then that’s all right. I feel that we understand one another, Mr. Marlow. Now tell me”-he looked like a small boy asking a riddle-“have you had any sales experience?”

  “None at all.”

  He looked crestfallen. “I was afraid not. However, we can’t have everything. A good engineer who can speak Italian with reasonable accuracy is something you don’t find every day. Excuse me one moment.” He lifted the telephone. “Hallo, Jenny, my dear, please ask Mr. Fitch if he would mind stepping over to my office for a moment.” He put the telephone down and turned to me again. “Mr. Fitch is our export manager. A very nice fellow, with two bonny children, a boy and a girl. His wife, poor soul, is dead. I think you will like him.”

  “I wonder,” I said, “if you would mind giving me some idea of what the post involves, Mr. Pelcher?”

  He clasped his forehead. “Good heavens, of course. I thought I’d told you. You see, Mr. Marlow”-he clutched at his collar-“we are not a very big concern. We specialise in one particular class of machine. You probably know that.” I didn’t, but I nodded. “We have,” he continued, “a slogan. ‘There is a Spartacus machine for every high-production boring job.’ It is, within limits, a comprehensive description of our activities. Actually, however, we have been concentrating more and more during the past year or so on high-speed automatic machines for shell production. About a third of our shop space is at present given over to that work. It was started more or less as a side-line. I had some ideas on the subject of that type of machine. We worked them out. They were successful. We secured world patent rights on the design of the Spartacus Type S2 automatic. Incidentally, the word Spartacus was my idea originally. It’s good, don’t you think-Spartacus the slave-neat. However, to return to the S2. We hold world patent rights, and I must say they’ve proved very valuable to us. We have licensed some of our American friends to manufacture; but we retained the European market for ourselves. I think we were wise. The Germans have produced a machine to compete with the S2, but it’s no better than ours, and we have had a good start. Business with the Continent has been really brisk. The Italians, in particular, took to the S2 immediately. The ordnance department of the Italian Admiralty were very interested. Firms installing our machines were able to reduce their costs quite phenomenally. We have, of course, been approached by British concerns, but frankly we have been kept so busy with export business that we haven’t bothered so far to cultivate the home market. The Italians have been so very helpful, too, in arranging the financial details. As a rule, you know, it’s quite difficult to get money out of Italy in these days. In our special case they pay with drafts on New York. You see, they need the machines. Very friendly of them. About a year ago we decided that it would pay us to open an Italian office. I couldn’t spare the time to keep on running over there all the time. Milan is, as you may know, the centre of things from our point of view. We got hold of a very good man for the job. You may have heard of his sad death. Ferning was the name.”